Mind Games, or, The Competition
by Bryon Nightshade
Summary: In a strange twist of fate, Snively and Robotnik end up going head-to-head. Can anybody win?
1. Default Chapter

            Robotnik punched in more commands on his keyboard, tired and frustrated. If there was one thing that never failed to disappoint him, it was his inability to duplicate his brilliance in silicon form.

            What he needed was a robot that could control cities and command armies as effectively as he himself. He could only be in one place at one time—of course Robotropolis was the lucky city where he resided, but he couldn't neglect the other cities without risking his entire empire. 

            Naturally, he'd started with his own brain as a model; it had gotten him here, after all. But no matter how often he tried, there was no machine that could analyze his synapses and reproduce them in a robot. 

            In the beginning, he'd hoped the Roboticiser would provide the key, as it could faithfully alter brains to computer form. Robotnik originally thought that if he were to simply copy the pattern of his mind and reproduce it in a robot, he would have the perfect sub-commanders for his Swatbot armies. Sadly, there was always something missing—the element of initiative, of original thought. No machine he created had that capacity. Without it, trying to mimic the form of the original was a fruitless exercise.

            He had no interest in trying similar operations in worker bots. He would just as soon take no chances with them, thank you very much. It was the case that initiative in those was to be feared.

            The only alternative was to try and adapt the programming of Swatbots to the high art of strategy. This called for a very high degree of incident-specific programming and advanced decision-making techniques. Swatbots were not built for this task, and Robotnik had discovered this problem. No Swatbot was intelligent enough to actually run this program while maintaining its own operations. They were too dumb.

            So he'd gone further and rebuilt an entire caste of Command Swatbots, which lacked some of the combat capabilities and replaced them with additional processors and memory.

            Midway through that project, he'd had a brainstorm. Rather than retrofit some Swatbots, why not create a new class of robot and use them as commanders? Robotnik had thought it brilliant at the time. He designed a new class of "brain bots" with no combat capabilities. He discarded some of the things that complicated the Swatbot design, such as self-propulsion and manipulating limbs. The design had turned out to be a great big block. 

            Robotnik sent the first to the city of Eastern Reach for field tests. These tests proved that big blocks were very hard to move around and cumbersome to transport to the field. Worse, a big block couldn't even plug itself in. So once it was delivered to Eastern Reach, it sat there like—well, like a big block, inert. The local resistance movements had quickly swept through the city, stealing things and destroying occasional dead Swatbots for giggles.

            To solve that problem had required Robotnik to design commands for the worker bot maintaining the brain bot. Since the worker bot didn't have the specifications of the brain bot stored, Robotnik's new algorithms also had to include the specs. This had caused the algorithm to exceed the normal size of commands that one worker bot could manage. This forced Robotnik to redesign the algorithm and split the duties amongst a team of worker bots.

            This did indeed solve the problem. Finally the brain bot was plugged in and began working, coordinating the Swatbots and worker bots just as Robotnik had hoped it would. About that time, however, the resistance movements at Eastern Reach staged an "assassination" mission. It wasn't every day that a big block had so many bots crowded around it, so the resistance quickly ascertained its true nature. They also correctly ascertained that destroying the big block would throw the city into chaos. With the brain bot dead, the resistance movements spent the next few days looting the city and mugging isolated Swatbots.

            Luckily, Robotnik's second brain bot was rolling off the assembly lines at about that time. To remedy the situation at Eastern Reach, Robotnik sent the second brain bot there to restore order.

            It did exactly what it was programmed to do. It followed its lines of logic perfectly, and learned from its predecessor's mistakes. It determined that completing its mission to keep control over the city was entirely contingent upon its own survival. Thus, it lined the Swatbots of Eastern Reach up shoulder-to-shoulder in a ring around its location, giving itself maximum protection.

            Naturally, the resistance movements swept in again, looting everything out of blaster range of the brain bot's guards. The brain bot determined that these were acceptable losses; Robotnik determined that the brain bot project was full of crap.

            Out of this debacle Robotnik emerged with two guiding principles. First: commanders have to be relatively self-sustaining; it doesn't help to have a commander that can't plug itself in, nor one that fears for its existence. Second, commanders must be low-profile; they must not draw attention to the fact that they're the center of all operations in their particular city.

            To this end, Robotnik had returned to the Swatbot Commander Caste project. In the first incarnation he loaded it up with several reserve power packs, so that it would be able to operate for very long periods of time and could recharge while still operational. This had led to a very fragile design that was prone to exploding during construction. So Robotnik decided that one Swatbot Commander wouldn't be enough for a given area.

            He redesigned them yet again, this time to work in five-member teams. He built five of them and sent them to Eastern Reach. Upon activation, they quickly deadlocked and shut down operations. Even as the resistance movements checked to see if there was anything lootable that they'd missed the past few times, Robotnik analyzed the bots to see what the problem was. It turned out that the Swatbots were incapable of deciding how to split the duties; they had disagreed as to the efficiency of a given commander taking on a given task, had been unable to resolve the disagreement, and had bogged down.

            So Robotnik finally came up with the perfect design. It could move and fight on its own as a normal Swatbot. It could recharge anywhere there was a robot, hover unit, or power outlet nearby by "plugging in" and leeching the electricity, negating the need to shut down. It was marginally more efficient than Robotnik as it had instant access to the information networks of the Swatbots in its area. 

            The only flaw was that it was still stupid. No matter what design Robotnik came up with, he still ran against the same limitations of unoriginality, predictability, and lack of initiative.

            After having spent the better part of 3226 designing it, however, Robotnik was in no mood to spend more time on this problem and resigned himself to living with it.

            These Swatbot commanders were known by various names—the Brainiacs to Eastern Reach, the Coordinators to Center City, Metronome to the Southern Continent. Yet taking them out was difficult, as they were very mobile, could defend themselves, and were hard to identify in the first place—they looked very similar to normal Swatbots, after all.

            Robotnik was satisfied for several years with this arrangement.

            Yet as the years dragged on, Robotnik began to be put under stress. The intensity of resistance in many places didn't decline; in certain places it increased. Though Robotnik himself could find villages every once in a while, his Commanders were notoriously incompetent at it. When the Knothole Freedom Fighters activated in 3230, it was the beginning of the end for the Swatbot Commander Caste version 1.9.2. The amount of damage done by the Freedom Fighters began to exceed Robotnik's ability to keep up with the damage, given the stress he was under around the globe. With each year the Knothole animals grew more competent and their attacks more devastating.

            This began to worry Robotnik. To compensate and ensure his victory, he began trying to squeeze everything he could out of the other cities under his control. Unfortunately, the Swatbot Commanders were simply not up to this challenge. Since Robotnik and Snively obviously couldn't be everywhere at once, Robotnik determined he needed a new commander caste.

            Robotnik swore, reminded himself how much he hated doing this, and deleted around thirty lines of programming code. No, no, no! That wouldn't work! Why couldn't he just digitize his own mind? This method was, by contrast, so crude… he hated it!

            "Sir?"

            Robotnik was very irritated at the moment, and Snively prying into his operations and disrupting his concentration NOW, of all times… he wasn't feeling very forgiving, oh no. 

            "WHAT?"

            There was an audible yelp of surprise. "Well, sir, the freighters carrying the new equipment have come in."

            "Snively, coordinating all of that is YOUR job! I am not to be disturbed!"

            "Yes, sir."

            Ooh, that was disgusting. He called me over the arrival of some freighters? Please! That's routine business, Snively's job anyway. Even if they were carrying special equipment. Who cared?

            Robotnik finally settled his thoughts down. Now, how to get around that problem? He resumed working, but a few minutes later he heard the faint sounds of an explosion and alarms.

            Alarms went off right over Robotnik's head. He screamed in agony—the sound was far too loud! Far too close! Who designed that stupid alarm system? (He had, but the thought never occurred to him.)

            "Aagh! This is Robotnik! Turn off alarms in this room! SHUT UP!"

            It took several seconds and several repetitions of the words 'shut up', but the computer finally complied. Robotnik had stood during the commotion. Now his ears were ringing and destroying his balance. He tried to sit down and plopped right off his chair.

            It took him much effort, but he stood again, muttering curses loudly. He went to the comm. screen.

            "Snively! What was that?!"  
            "The Freedom Fighters, sir."

            "WHAT? Why didn't you tell me as soon as you knew?!"

            "Y-you said you didn't want to be disturbed, sir!"

            "Exceptions for the Freedom Fighters go without saying, stupid! And you failed to turn off the alarms in my private lab!"

            Snively scowled internally. Turn off your own alarms, rotund one! You were the one in the room, not I! He wisely kept his mouth shut.

            "Snively, I'll be up there in a moment to check the situation. I am very angry right now!" Robotnik cut the transmission and waddled for the elevator.

            Normally this would lead to Snively sighing in resignation and wondering why he deserved his fate. This time, though, he was tired and angry, too. "What was so important," he thought, "that Robotnik would cut himself off?"

            He used the security cameras to gain visual access to Robotnik's lab, then magnified the view of the materials he was working on. Snively quickly realized—it was a new version of the code for the Swatbot Commander Caste!

            "That idiot!" whispered Snively. "I'm a better programmer than he will ever be!"

            Quickly he erased the image from the screen and pretended to pay attention to the Swatbots searching for any sign of the Freedom Fighters. In his mind, though, he began to scheme.

            Yes, Robotnik is an incompetent programmer. He's a mechanical person, not a programmer. I know… I'll develop the program myself! I'll write a new version of the program! Maybe I'll even earn a little gratitude!

            A little voice inside him whispered, "More likely he'll whip you for insubordination." Snively slapped that voice down. Why was it always making trouble?

            Robotnik entered the room, stormclouds hovering over his head. "Well? Have the Swatbots found anything?"

            "No, sir." Snively read the information as it came in, but did a good job faking preparedness. "Initial reports indicate that the explosion occurred at a blaster energy pack factory. There doesn't even seem to be any bomb fragments like you usually find—it appears the explosion was caused through a corruption of our equipment."

            Robotnik growled. "Which means there's no way to know when the Freedom Fighters did the damage. It could have been done just now, or last week."

            Snively was impressed sometimes by Robotnik's abilities to make something out of limited information. All too often, of course, it was a blind—wrong—guess. This time it seemed about right.

            "They're investigating to see just how much damage was done to the factory, but initial estimates place time to repair at…" Snively stopped speaking, for something was caught in his throat.

            "At what?"

            Snively managed to swallow and tried again to tell Robotnik. "Six-to-eight weeks, sir."

            Robotnik raged, slamming his fist against his throne. What frustration! One of these days I'll actually hurt my throne from this! It was unreasonable to think that, as it was covered in a sheath of diamond glass for just this reason, but Robotnik in a way liked the idea of having it shield itself from his wrath. It was a proof of Robotnik's control over it.

            Why Robotnik needed proof of his superiority over a chair was beyond Snively's reckoning.

            "At least it wasn't anything vital," said Robotnik calming. "We have a stockpile of blasters, correct, Snively?"

            "Yes, sir, and between the other factories and careful cannibalism we should have just enough power packs to get us through without losing combat power."

            Robotnik felt that tightness around his neck again. We shouldn't have to pick ammunition from Swatbot corpses, he thought. We weren't hurt by this attack, but we'll be crippled by the next if the Freedom Fighters follow this up.

            Robotnik thought it a blessing that, for years, the Freedom Fighters had never been able to tell if they were having an effect on Robotnik. For example, one year they'd hit factory after factory that made the hover drives for hover units. Robotnik had come very close to having to shut down production of all hover unit parts made in Robotropolis. Yet because of the fog of war, the rodents had begun targeting other things.

            For some reason Robotnik couldn't grasp that fog was lifting now. The Freedom Fighters had more and more accurate intelligence, and did more and more damage. This worried him to no end—was there not a limit to what a few furries could do?

            This was why he needed maximum efficiency from his other cities. He knew that the resistance groups around the globe were taking casualties, and he needed to get lucky just once here in Robotropolis. Or the Freedom Fighters would eventually be smoked out of their home, the Great Forest poisoned to extinction. If he could keep himself at full strength long enough, he would inevitably win, through attrition or pollution or both. The trick was going to be staying at full strength. 

            Robotnik got off of his throne. "Snively, I'm going to return to my lab. Disturb me only if there are Freedom Fighters, but for no other reasons. Oh, and deactivate the alarms in that lab."

            "Sir," said Snively, swallowing his fear, "Perhaps I could work on the Swatbot Commanders?"

            Robotnik stopped in his tracks. A dozen different responses flashed through his head, ranging from gratitude to disgust.

            "Are you brain-dead?!" That was the 'disgust' response.

            "N-no, sir, but, as I am the better programmer…"

            "YOU? Since when have you been the better programmer?"

            "Sir, you said so before the coup…"

            "Shut up! I am not turning over such an important project to you!"

            Snively seized on a reserve of courage. "Very well, sir, but…" His courage froze; he trailed off.

            "But what?"

            "What if I can do it in addition to you?"

            "In competition with ME?"

            "Yes, sir."  As soon as Snively said it, of course, he realized, no, that wasn't what he'd meant, but it was too late now.

            Robotnik considered. A competition with Snively would be almost beneath him! If the lackey had nothing better to do, he might as well.

            "Fine. I will stoop to allow this. You can do this in any spare time you have apart from your normal duties."

            You fool, now I'll show you up once and for all! "Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!"

            "The competition will end in two weeks. At that time, whatever program you've created will have to be used. We'll randomly select two Swatbots to use as proxies."

            Snively smiled. "Very good, sir!"

            Robotnik left, wondering at the gleeful expression on his lackey's face. How unusual, that…

            He was on his way back to his laboratory when he realized how stupid he'd been.

            This would waste his time and Snively's time both, which was inefficient. Planning to combat Snively would involve different strategies than planning to combat the Freedom Fighters.

            And suppose the mutant won…?!

            Robotnik's authority would be destroyed! He'd lose his aura of invincibility! He'd damage his pride!

            No, he wouldn't lose. He would swallow his pacemaker before he'd let that happen!

            And yet… what if Snively was a good programmer?

            I won't lose!

            Snively was already hard at work. Two weeks wasn't enough to write a whole new program, but he could, potentially, use one of Robotnik's old programs, tighten and optimize it, and squeeze winning efficiency out of it.

            What programs were available? There was the original command Swatbot code, and the programs the current Swatbot Commanders were using. Snively wasn't sure if he wanted to use those, as Robotnik would surely be basing his work off of the same code, and Snively wanted something fresher.

            That was interesting… the old brain bot project. Snively knew the bot itself was impractical, but the programs might be worthwhile. Snively pulled up the data.

            He was appalled.

            "How could Robotnik work like this?" he screeched.

            In every program Snively had ever written, he'd included oodles of documentation—words that someone writing or editing the code could see, but that the computer running the code would ignore. The documentation would help the programmer follow the logic of the program and let him see exactly how it worked.

            Robotnik apparently had a vendetta against documentation, for there was approximately one line of documentation per thousand lines of code. Usually, it ran something like this:

            //I AM ROBOTIK, RULER OF ALL.

            Fat lot of good that does me! Thought Snively. How am I supposed to follow the logic of a program like this?

            He pulled up the other two programs. In each of those, unfortunately, the documentation was worse; it was less frequent, and often something like this:

            // I LOVE TO DESTROY THE BLUE ONE YOU KNOW.

            Or,

            // I HATE THAT HEDGEHOG!

            Snively frowned. How, exactly, had that documentation gotten there? After all, the code was written in 3226, yet the hedgehog had only really appeared starting in 3230. Snively chalked it up as another example of his master's unhealthy obsession—he was imprinting his hatred everywhere. It was like a computer version of a voodoo doll.

            Snively giggled. "Maybe he thinks that this will make the Swatbots hate the hedgehog, so they'll actually do something useful!"

            He laughed for a few seconds at the thought. What a doof Robotnik was!

            Robotnik's face appeared on his monitor. "Snively!"

            "Yes, sir," said Snively, his laughter vanishing instantly.

            "I told you that you could only work on the program when you don't have other things to do!"

            "I don't have anything else to do, sir."

            "Really? Check your command queue!"

            Snively checked it and gasped.

            "Get to it, Snively!" Robotnik blinked out.

            Snively gritted his teeth. "That fat jerk has given me a hundred different assignments!"

            It was clear that Robotnik was going to play dirty. He'd give Snively so much to do that he'd have to abandon his work. Well, Snively wasn't going to give in to such a cheap trick!

            Snively called up a program he'd written many years ago. It was, basically, a computer-Snively: it could handle most routine tasks, and Robotnik hadn't thought up any tasks that were truly original; comp-Sniv could handle most of it. Snively didn't like using the program, as it was… unreliable, at best. Still, it would help Snively stay somewhat even with Robotnik in this game.

            "Take that, fathead!" Snively called as he told the program to commence operation.

            Uncle Chuck was quietly pretending to work when he received a bizarre order.

            For the years since his Roboticisation, his life had been quite poor—wasting away for Robotnik in the slavery of his robot hide. However, thanks to Sonic, a Power Ring, and a lot of will power, Robotnik's hold on his mind was undone.

            Now, though, he continued to work in Robotropolis as a spy. After all, how was Robotnik to know about an abstract something deep in Uncle Chuck's mind?

            The order he'd just received had been a general one to the worker bots in the factory. Yet for the life of him Uncle Chuck could not grasp how and why it was given.

            New sets of instructions were being given, but there was something wrong with them—as if whoever giving the orders didn't have his head screwed on quite right. This person was ordering Swatbots to do manual labor and worker bots to handle guard duty.

            Uncle Chuck glanced about. The other worker bots were leaving their duty stations and going to the various guard posts. The programming Robotnik had installed prevented them from carrying weaponry, so they stood around with their paws in the positions to hold blasters, yet lacking the actual blasters to hold.

            This was absurd! Uncle Chuck took his position and placed his paws, wondering all the time what they were smoking at Robotropolis HQ.

            Robotnik typed furiously. He was on a real clock now—for his own sake he HAD to win!

            In his rush he could bang out around thirty typos per minute, plus a word or two on accident. This led to much swearing as he tried to make the computer understand what, exactly, he meant.

            Another brainstorm occurred to him. What if… what if Snively tried to cheat?

            It was a very real possibility. The disloyal cretin might try to cheat to even the odds! Well, he'd have to put a stop to that!

            He set his brain to working out the possible ways in which Snively could rig the contest. It was no hard work for his fertile brain.

            In the art of cheating, Ivo Robotnik was the undisputed Grand Master. In the theory aspect, his imagination was unmatched; in execution, he lacked both flaw and peer. He'd perfected some of his techniques before the King had learned to read.

            And, unlike Grand Masters of other arts, Robotnik was in no hurry to find an apprentice.

            For this reason, when he set his mind to imagining the possible ways for Snively to rig the contest, his mind overflowed with options.

            One might ask why Robotnik would choose not to adapt some of those options to suit himself. Indeed, he asked himself that very same question. The answer was, for him, somewhat discouraging. The reason he'd taken this contest to heart to such an extent was because of his ego. He would prove that Snively was no match for him as a programmer. Therefore, he had to win based upon his own skill as a programmer, not his ability to cheat. Granted, winning was more important than honesty, but for once in his life he felt the need to achieve a "clean" victory. In this one instance, cheating would be like admitting he couldn't win based on skill-- and Ivo Robotnik was not going to admit to that!

            Why, then, did he give Snively so much work to do? Well, there was no recalling that now; besides, that was his "home field advantage" for beginning the contest as the superior.

            With that thought, he threw his energy into countering any plan for cheating Snively could come up with.

            Snively was hard at work. Simply tracing the logic lines of this program was very tiring work! He'd begun to diagram it, showing where the functions tied together, where the main programs existed and interacted, the ways in which the processes worked.

            He began to panic. This was taking far too long. If it took him too long to simply decipher what the program did, he would have too little time to modify it to work for him!

            "Snively!"

            Snively yelped, whirled around, flinging sweat from his body. "Yes, sir?"

            The tyrant was walking back into the control room. "Computer, randomly select two Swatbots!"

            Two serial numbers appeared on the monitors on the wall.

            "Now, order those Swatbots to come here, immediately! Display the time until they get here."

            A timer appeared and began counting down.

            "What is this about, sir?" Snively said, rudely as he dared.

            "These Swatbots," Robotnik said, "will be our proxies for this battle."

            "Sir," Snively said, "a Swatbot chassis is too limited for the programs we'll design!"

            "Whatever you come up with should have the programming to erase the Swatbot's previous programming. They won't need to move, fly, shoot, or any such thing, so all of that can be erased. This should leave enough room to store the new program." Robotnik frowned. "You DO know how to program such commands, right?"

            Robotnik had been aiming to rile Snively with the last comment; he succeeded. "Of course I do, it's elementary! Sir!"

            "In that case, we'll use them. These Swatbots will be placed in a sealed room, with four security cameras monitoring them at all times. In the name of fairness, of course."

            "Of course," said Snively, silently sneering. "But I get to have access to the feeds of those cameras in real-time."

            "As will I," Robotnik replied.

            They stared at each other for a few moments until the Swatbots entered. "Swatbots, proceed to room 5062 and power down!"

            Robotnik had selected that room because it was a strategy room. In its center was a holographic projector, and several Swatbots could plug into it to manipulate the holograms.

            They moved to comply. Robotnik and Snively followed them, eying one another carefully, searching painstakingly for knives. It was quite a trick for them to squeeze through doorways together, but they scrupulously avoided losing sight of one another. All discreetly, of course; neither would ever suspect what the other was up to.

            (Right.)

            When the Swatbots got to the room, they powered down as ordered. Snively said, "Surely, sir, you wouldn't mind my inspecting the cameras?"

            "Not at all," Robotnik said. All cameras were focused on Snively as he checked first one, then the others of the cameras. He seemed surprised, thought Robotnik, but what can he be doing looking so closely at the cameras? Is he looking for something? Maybe he's planting something on them somehow…

            Robotnik assured himself that he would give a VERY thorough looking-over to the security tapes afterwards.

            Snively was quite astonished. None of the cameras looked like they'd been tampered with. This didn't cause Snively to think they weren't, but he'd expected Julian to be cheating his mustache off already. Well, the possibility existed that he'd done something to them beforehand…

            Snively assured himself that he would give a VERY thorough looking-over to the security tapes afterwards.

            "Shall we?" said Robotnik.

            "Coming, sir," responded Snively. They squeezed through the doorway again. Snively was almost sure Robotnik was trying to kill him by smashing Snively against the doorframe, but he squeaked through unharmed. All, amazingly, without letting the dictator out of his sight.

            Snively and Robotnik stared at each other for several seconds after the door locked and sealed. Then, they turned away from each other and sprinted back towards their computers. No reason to let the other get a head start, right?

            Snively was infuriated. Robotnik made all those moves to insinuate that Snively was cheating… how disgusting! Well, Snively was quite certain that all of this was part of some diabolical plot to cheat Snively out of his rightful victory! Putting so much emphasis on preventing cheating was just the sort of smokescreen Robotnik would use to advance his own cheating!

            He immediately began working to track down Robotnik's ploy and counteract it.

            Robotnik was infuriated. Snively played dumb the whole time. Well, any way that Robotnik could imagine Snively cheating, he would work to prevent.

            Both humans worked furiously—one on proving the other a cheater, the other on preventing the one from cheating.

            Neither worked on the Swatbot Commander program.

To be continued…


	2. The Competition, Chapter Two

            Robotnik and Snively hardly moved from their computers that first week. They responded the occasional Freedom Fighter attack, but Snively let comp-Sniv handle routine work and the rest of their time was spent on the programming jobs.

            Or rather, on the programming contest; neither was making much progress on the job.

            Robotnik was looking over his list of possible maneuvers by Snively that he could counter. Everything from tampering with Robotnik's Swatbot proxy to constructing a virus to fill Snively in on Robotnik's progress—all had been duly considered by Robotnik. He'd come up with appropriate counters for all of them.

            And still his mind spewed forth ideas!

            Robotnik jotted down the new ideas and discarded the ones he considered beyond Snively's skill. For the rest, he set an upper time limit on how long he'd spend on each: one hour. Okay, maybe one and a half, but no more! He had to start work on the code!

            Snively's hands shook uncontrollably. He was sustaining himself solely on his coffee supply, and it was beginning to show. He typed in more commands, trying to uncover what Robotnik was trying to do. The dictator was establishing elaborate safeguards around his system. In order, no doubt, to prevent Snively from deciphering the truth about Robotnik's plot.

            He tried to covertly bypass the first firewall, but when he looked up at the large monitors he suddenly blacked out.

            Gravity took over and smashed him onto the metal floor of the command room. Thankfully, the impact and the cold combined to awaken him instantly. He let out a scream of surprise and pain; but as he did, the idea struck him.

            It was no good trying to prove Robotnik's cheating if he lost by default!

            He needed something worthwhile to bring to the competition, something of his own work, if there was to be any meaning to this whole exercise! Sure, Robotnik would cheat; who cared? That truth would be irrelevant if the competition never took place. Snively had to get to work, and now!

            He sprung back up, took a mighty swig of coffee, and plunged back into the brain bot program, cursing the lack of documentation yet again.

            The problem with their plans caught them at about the same time.

            "Sir, how are the Swatbots going to compete with each other if we're in control of everything?"

            "I'll randomize a city. Both sides will control that city and a 50-kilometer radius around it. That's what the Swatbot Commanders have to control anyway!"

            "And we should assume their borders connect?"

            "Of course. And the city is…" Robotnik gasped and paled in horror, but managed to clearly say, "Eastern Reach."

            Snively cut off the comm. system mere microseconds before laughter overtook him. The city where Robotnik's experiments lost him so much material and nearly cost him the city! There! Oh, this gave Snively quite a psychological advantage, yes indeed!

            Someone somewhere was smiling on Snively, that was for sure.

            He went at the program with renewed gusto.

            If the first week had made the humans unresponsive, the second week made them absolutely sedentary.

            Neither moved much from their posts. They had food sent to them. Robotnik slept on a lab table; Snively simply consumed caffeine. If either could have worn a catheter, they would have preferred it to the endless bathroom breaks their new lifestyle required.

            Even the Freedom Fighters' raids ceased to have the same degree of meaning.

            Sonic and Sally stood outside Robotnik's lab. "Whatever he's doin'," said Sonic, "he's way past into it!"

            "Well, there's no way to get in," said Sally. "We might as well forget about him. He isn't even calling security on us."

            Sonic laughed. "What a maroon!"

            They then proceeded to trash the Roboticiser and steal numerous parts from it, then leave quietly.

            It wasn't that the humans didn't care that the Freedom Fighters were there; they just weren't aware of it. Whenever the animals were found, Snively and Robotnik organized the pursuit from their computers, then immediately let their attention drift back to their programs as soon as the furries were lost from sight.

            It occurred to Robotnik one day as he was rewriting a major section of his program that something about this just wasn't right.

            Of course. The fact remained that he was preparing to defeat Snively with this program, not the Freedom Fighters. So even if he won, he would have to rewrite the Swatbot commander again to address the fact that it would be facing more anti-insurrection work than out-and-out warfare.

            So what? He would have his pride! And that would allow him to create the best anti-insurrection commander ever seen.

            The thought never occurred to Snively. He was too busy.

            By the third day of the second week, Snively had to order a replacement keyboard. His own keyboard had been worn down into unresponsiveness through his harsh and constant banging of it.

            Robotnik created in his mind the scenarios and strategies he expected. In his war strategies, Robotnik was the dagger and warhammer. Victory came through bleeding the opponent dry, through hitting him here and here and here and here, and then crushing his head in with one swift smashing attack. 

            Robotnik took great pains to explain this to himself, numerous times. He believed it helped to organize his thoughts. That he'd never seen anyone try to use a dagger and a warhammer together is quite obvious.

            When the Freedom Fighters spied on them occasionally, it took all of their control to avoid screeching out at the humans,

            "Hey, aren't you fighting US? Because you're not planning for it, morons!"

            But it mattered little to them that they were eleven years out of date. The last real, full-scale battle had been the last battle of the Great War.

            That didn't matter. What mattered was PRIDE!

            "Ha," thought Robotnik, "Snively didn't know what he was getting into. No matter how good of a programmer Snively is, he has nowhere near my grasp of strategy and tactics!"

            "Ha," thought Snively. "Julian probably thinks his experience as Warlord gives him an edge. Well, I was better than Warlord; I was the Warlord's secretary! I know that the real war lies in the logistics and production, and that bouncing ball of butter could never win a conflict based on that!"

            "Logistics matter less when they're constant and identical," thought Robotnik. "And I know the importance of logistics; that's why my strategies involve slowly cutting them off from my opponent! A constant pressure will force that little mutant's production down, so he'll be unable to keep up with me!"

            "Let Julian waste his time and army with tactics. I'll be busy manufacturing oodles of Swatbots. Yes! Oodles! And those oodles will crush fatso the moment they're ready! I just need a big enough numbers advantage and I won't need strategy or tactics! Just more and more and more, yeees!"

            "He's no match for me! He has the imagination of a rock and the brains of a tree!"

            "Idiot! He's so large he's got his own moons!"

            "Hairless freak!"

            "Mustachioed masochistic moron!"

            "Needle-nose light bulb!"

            "Crisco addict!"

            And they both thought together, "DDDDDDIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

            So both were equally surprised when the bell went off.

            The computer voice told them, "Two weeks have expired."

            Robotnik waddled to the communicator, sweating. This wasn't good! He wasn't ready! He'd started his program too late, and it was non-functional! If he started the competition now, Snively would win, and he couldn't allow that!

            "Snively, I am authorizing an extension of the time limit! You have two more days!"

            "Thank you, sir." Ignoramus! thought Snively. I expected that from the start, wretched ruler! I knew your cheating would set you back in your attempts to actually write a program, so I knew you'd give me an extension. So my program wasn't ready either, because I've paid special attention to all the details along the way. Now I have two days to finish up, and that's more than enough. You're going down!

            Down the home stretch they thundered. Robotnik began hallucinating, his paranoia running rampant. He imagined constantly that Swatbots were tiptoeing up behind him and that mechanical flies with cameras attached were spying on him. He wasted four precious hours constructing a device to scan for any operable scanners and any functional robots in the area. The security camera that had clued Snively in about Robotnik's project had met a gruesome fate approximately thirty seconds into the competition. No part of it was intact; over fifty pieces of it were scattered around the back of Robotnik's lab.

            If he considered uncontrollable paranoia a horrible problem, he should have been thankful he wasn't Snively.

            "Y-y-yes… I am in-n-n-n-nvincible! Swatbots are natural-l-l-ly loyal to me! I built them! Yes, loyalty will d-d-d-determine this b-b-b-battle!"

            Snively's problems with stuttering were only worsened by his sleep deprivation and coffee addiction. He had to retype far more than he was used to, as his hands shook wildly while typing. His proofreading time tripled.

            Snively's dedication to efficiency had led him to cancel any breaks for sleep a normal person might take. As a consequence, his effectiveness in terms of progress per hour was dropping sharply. Snively realized this, of course, but there was no turning back now; Snively knew that he'd gone too long without sleep. If he were to sleep now, he'd be unable to wake up for at least a day. Probably two.

            Snively, too, was beginning to lose his focus, and it showed in his documentation.

            // For the past thirty minutes, I practiced my victory dance over Robotnik. I do

            // hope I get to use it.

            // This is the best line of code in the whole piece. Brilliant! Brilliant!

            // Can furries actually smell fear, or is that a myth?

            // Can Julian smell fear? I don't think that's a myth.

            Robotnik rushed through his programming, making heavy use of cut-and-paste to shave time off his operations. Sadly, you can't use a variable for more than one thing at a time, and Robotnik's corner-cutting measures ended up with the same set of variables being in use in multiple places throughout the program. It took almost an hour to hunt them all down, which made Robotnik's corner-cutting measure about as effective as adding dimension to a circle.

            If Robotnik's problem was trying to do too much with too little, Snively's was trying to do too much, period. His program was filled with exceptions for certain circumstances, taking into account weather, time of year, wind, everything—down to and including phases of the moon. That had an influence on the tides, right? And that might matter, eventually.

            (Forgetting that Eastern Reach was an inland city.)

            As the final minutes approached, both sought to tie up their programs so that they would actually work. Robotnik was trying to proofread and make sure his program worked; Snively attempted to cram in a few extra functions to deal with a few more problems he hadn't accounted for.

            "Time is up!"

            "NNNNOOOO!" cried the humans.

            Robotnik saved his program to disk. "Hurry up! Hurry up!" he yelled at it.

            "Hurry up! Hurry up!" said Snively.

            Robotnik ejected his disk the moment the file was done saving. Robotnik didn't even care to close the program.

            Snively left his compiler still running. It attempted a background save, found the disk missing, and crashed. Snively didn't care; the only version he needed was in his hands.

            Robotnik hastened to the elevator to the sealed room. He made a mistake, punched the wrong button, went in the wrong direction. He responded by ripping out the control panel and forcing the elevator to reverse directions. As soon as it reached the proper floor, he pried the doors open and in haste rushed out. The elevator's control panel shorted out and fried its systems. Seconds after Robotnik left it, it lost control and plunged the fifty-odd stories to the bottom of the shaft.

            Snively didn't care about what happened to the elevator. If he got to the room much before Robotnik did, he could claim Robotnik had worked past the time limit and claim victory by default.

            Robotnik tried to peer around the corner. He had to get there before Snively did so that the little mutant couldn't cheat!

            The two of them collided at the door to the room. They dropped their disks, then scrambled to recover them.

            "Don't try anything!" Robotnik snarled.

            "What would I try, sir, that you wouldn't?" Snively shot back

            "And what is that supposed to mean?" Robotnik said, grabbing a disk and pulling it to himself.

            "Oh, nothing, sir," said Snively in the same tone, also grabbing a disk.

            Robotnik checked the disk in his hand. Well, it did say what Robotnik had written on it to make it distinctive—

            TOP SECRET!

            TOUCH AT THE COST OF

            YOUR MISERABLE LIFE!

            (OR EXISTENCE, IF YOU

            ARE A ROBOT.)

            "Show me your disk!" Robotnik said.

            "Why should I, sir?"

            "Humor me, fool!"

            Snively sneered and showed the disk to Robotnik. Across it was written,

            HEREIN LIES THE FIN-

            -AL AND ULTIMATE

            EXPRESSION OF MY

            GENIUS.

            And under that were crossed out letters that might, if they were clearer, spell out,

            SUCK IT, ROBOTNIK!

            "Are you suspicious of something, sir?" Snively said, semi-mockingly. "Had a few too many ideas, perhaps?"

            "I will not take such idiocy from your mouth, Snively! Let's start this!"

            "Oh, yes, sir, I'm anxious to begin." Just to see the look on your fat face! It would be worth the inevitable beating just to see the way your chins would jiggle as you shook your head in denial!

            Robotnik pressed his palm to the door panel; the door slid open. There were the two Swatbots, exactly as the humans had left them. Robotnik and Snively once again squeezed through the doorway as one.

            This could definitely be bad for my health, thought Snively. Very tight squeeze with lardo there!

            What an annoyance, Robotnik thought. What, is he trying to get close enough to do something? Robotnik tightened his grip on his disk.

            They sat down opposite each other and inserted their disks into the Swatbots. Robotnik then activated the hologram projector.

            "Computer," he said, "create new scenario. Data entry:" Robotnik grimaced, "Eastern Reach."

            A map appeared.

            "Now duplicate, placing the duplicate contiguous with the original."

            Now there were two Eastern Reaches, sharing a common border.

            "Increase time index to one week per minute."

            He looked at Snively. "All is ready."

            The two stared at each other. This was the showdown, the face-to-face confrontation that would mean exactly nothing once they turned the battle over to their Swatbot proxies, yet was still vital to the performance.

            The tension in the air was thicker than granite.  Snively's hands shook for reasons other than caffeine shock. Robotnik's pacemaker was in real danger.

            "Go!" Robotnik yelled. He'd started moving a scant second before shouting. That wasn't cheating, he thought, it was my advantage for running the contest.

            The humans jammed their disks into the Swatbots and hit the power switch.

            The hologram flickered, then cut out. What was going on? thought Robotnik. That's not supposed to happen!

            "Warning!" said the Swatbots. "Sabotage alert!"

            Robotnik and Snively went off at the word 'warning'. They leapt behind their chairs and pressed against the wall. They did this with different amounts of grace; Robotnik landing on the ground rattled the floor.

            Twin explosions shook the room and blasted superheated air and shrapnel over the humans. When they looked up across the room at each other, all that remained of the bots and the programs were metal shards and a few metal feet.

            The humans' reaction was swift, loud, and predictable.

            "YOU SABOTAGED THE CONTEST, CHEATER!!!"

            Snively gave a hmph and folded his arms. "If I were trying to sabotage it, why would I destroy BOTH Swatbots, sir?"

            "Because you realized you couldn't win!"

            "Why would I challenge you in the first place, sir, if I thought I'd lose?"

            "You didn't, but you changed your mind!"

            "Sir, how about we look at the security cameras' recordings?"

            "Perhaps your first good idea, you lying, cheating lackey!"

            I would think he'd value me more if I were that bad, Snively thought. The two of them hurried back to the control room; the holo-projector in the strategy room had been folded in half by the twin explosions.

            Robotnik called out the commands to the main computer. "Call up the four security cameras' video recordings for the past two weeks for strategy room 5062. Search for any sign of motion."

            "Motion found," the computer responded in text on the monitors.

            "Access those files! Display all four cameras' files for that time index!"

            On four monitors, the video appeared. Snively and Robotnik gasped. It had been neither of them, nor a robot; it had been…

            "Those wretched Freedom Fighters!" they yelled.

            They were holding a conversation on screen. "What's all this about, Sal?" asked Sonic as the two entered the room.

            "Just wasting a lot of Robotnik's time. He and Snively are working on programs for a competition."

            "With each other? If there's ever a way where no one can win, this is it!"

            The humans blustered in outrage but kept focused on the video.

            "That's the idea, Sonic."

            "Hey, what're you doin'?"

            "When a computer powers up, it has a brief period when the settings are loading. Well, during that time, its firewalls are down, and it can be accessed by anyone. This includes the computers in Swatbots' heads. So since these Swatbots are shut down, I can upload any program I want into their heads by inserting a disk and powering them up. It's something Robotnik can't work around, that's why I'm not afraid of those cameras." She said this while pointing at one of the cameras.

            "Yo, Robuttnik, how ya doin'!" said Sonic, making rude gestures at one of the cameras.

            "Sonic!"

            "Sal, no one's watchin' or the alarms would've gone off already."

            "So why are you making a fool of yourself if no one's watching?"

            "'Cause they will after you're done, right?"

            "I suppose so."

            "So, what'll this program do?"

            "It'll cause the Swatbots to explode when they're powered up. That will take out not just the Swatbots, but the programs they've been working on all this time."

            "Cool! With luck Robuttnik'll get caught in the blast!"

            "I doubt it. The blast is just from overloading the energy cells on the bots, it won't do much damage."

            "Hey, a guy can dream, right?"

            "Dream on."

            "Hey!"

            "You walked into that one, Sonic!"

            "Robuttnik's better conversation than you, Sal. I'm gonna talk to him." Sonic turned back to the camera and blew a giant raspberry, getting saliva all over the lens. The humans were properly disgusted.

            "I'm all done, Sonic. Let's get out of here."

            "Nope, we're not done, Sal. Say hi to fatso!"

            "Sonic, have you no dignity at all?"

            "You don't have a choice," said Sonic as he pulled her in front of another camera. "C'mon, show some love."

            Sonic's gestures had been juvenile; Sally's was simply rude. The humans paled; Snively felt light-headed, though that was probably from his sleep deprivation.

            "Sal! Where did THAT come from? So much for dignity!"

            "You forced me into it, Sonic. Since I didn't have dignity anyway, why not make it something worthwhile?"

            "Remind me never to tick you off."

            The furries exited the room and closed the door; the camera feed froze, as there was no more motion after that.

            "Computer!" Robotnik was well and truly furious. "Why did you not inform me when those animals went in?"

            "Those were not this unit's orders," came the words on the screen.

            "WHAT? Well, then, what WERE your orders?"

            "To inform Robotnik if Snively or a robot entered the room, or to inform Snively if Robotnik or a robot entered the room."

            Neither had told the computer to look out for Freedom Fighters.

            The two humans slowly turned to face each other, faces turning redder and redder. Then they exploded.

            "You stupid, incompetent fool!"

            There was the briefest of pauses from shock, then Robotnik grabbed for Snively. "Misbegotten mutant! You'll pay for saying that!"

            Snively was already in deep trouble, so he decided to at least make a chase of it. "Sorry," said Snively as he dodged, turned, and ran, "I'm broke!"

            "Oh, you will be! Get back here! I order you to get back here!" Robotnik ran after Snively as fast as his legs could support his bulk.

            "If I'm going to insult you to your face," cried Snively, "why would I respect an order like that?"

            "Get back--Swatbots!"

            "Don't bother! I'll override them!"

            "I'll... override… your override… Swatbots!" Robotnik puffed as he tried to chase down Snively.

            Snively slowed a bit. "You can't chase me long! You'll have a heart attack!" said Snively, actually worried.

            "I have a pacemaker, twerp! I can't have a heart attack!"

            "Oh," said Snively. "In that case…" he started running again.

            Somewhere, the Freedom Fighters giggled.

  
FIN

Bryon Nightshade

Disclaimer: No, I do NOT actually own Robotnik, Snively, nor pretty much everything else in this story. Surprised? I knew you weren't. The above belong to one or more of the following: SEGA, DIC, or Archie Comics. This story copyrighted by Sam Durbin, a.k.a. Bryon Nightshade. Any attempts to profit from it, rip it off, or screw it up are prohibited.


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